A Glance at a Dining Experience Where One Family's Manners Leave Much to Be Desired

Miss Manners has new need in a time where manners seem optional. Yet has teaching manners become something passe or optional?

Do we consider it a choice to mind our manners for ourselves, or others around us? After a rather unpleasant dining experience I am reminded of the old 1950's Miss Manners articles and wonder if such a column wouldn't have come in handy to pass to my fellow diners.

I am sitting in a pancake house on a hot summers day at 7pm attempting to enjoy dinner with my fiance.

Beside me is a family of two adults, three children, and two infants in car seats.

They have spread themselves out so much at their table, that their child who had moved herself to sit near me is now kicking me in the shin and hitting me with her arm.

I attempt to move away from her only to have her then lie down and throw her shoe in my lap.I raise an eyebrow to look at the parent who only laughs and shakes her head saying "Kids!"

Now I am not a person who dislikes children, nor am I a person who believes in the silent child. Though I was the child who my parents took with them everywhere. I was taught that children were to be seen and not heard.

I knew that if I had children or worked with children, that would not be the way I exspected them to behave.

However, like a lot of childless and couples with children alike we believe there are boundries and rules.

Back at the house of flapjacks, the waitress come to get our drink orders when the younger boy child at the table began to regale us with his tale of how uncomfortable he was.

"I have to poop" he wailed. He continued on this vein, with his mother continuously updating the father loudly across the table of his childs need to deficate. When suddely the child cried out triumphantly. "Nevermind! I pooped my pansts!'

It was then that our waitress arrived with our food. Truly? This type of talk is ok at the table now?

I get embaressed when my dog poops on someones lawn and I run out of bags, but a child starts boisterously discussing pooping and he doesn't even get asked to keep it down.

There seems to be two modes of thought on this. Mode one is that everybody poops.

There is another that not even animals poop where they eat and they certainly don't talk about it, this tends to be my school of thought.

Everyones food began to arrive and their waitress was holding a huge tray of food on her shoulder.

She lifted a platter to put down and before she could set it down the father suddenly said "Wait a minute, we need to say grace"

He proceeded to make the waitress hold the tray and wait while he made a legnthy prayer.

Then upon ending the prayer he said "You can serve the food now, and we will need napkins, and wet wipes." The waitress looked stunned.

But smiled and hustled away to get napkins and wipes.

I think Miss. Manners would be outraged by the blatant disrespectfulness of this crew.

Showing their Christian beliefs in one hand while they show no respect for their fellow diners or server in the other.

During the meal we attempted to talk while babies cried and were ignored on the floor in their carriers.

Children and adults chewed with their mouths open and at one point the entire family laughed uproariously when the youngest son decided to lick a plate of BBQ sauce clean with his tongue.

Miss Manner's would say "This is not a horses stable, get your elbow's off the table! Scoop up that crying baby, and be a parent!"

There was no quelling glance, no warning clearance of the throat, no soothing of a crying infant. It was all I could do not to pick up the baby myself.

When I was a child going out for meals was a chance for kids to practice manners for when they were adults.

When we were at home I remember my mother throwing a spoonful of mashed potatos at my brother for swearing.

Or my Nana telling my brother if he was going to eat another piece of pie he had to eat it like a pig and busting out a trowel for him at Thanksgiving instead of a fork.

But in the restaurant it was special and it was not the time act like we'd never seen the inside of a building before.

My neices,nephews, cousins, Aunts, and Uncles are the same way.

They say please and thank you, they keep elbows off the table, they use silverware and napkins, and they use their best manners.

When did this idea become an optional thing for parents to teach their kids?After the meal while checking out the mother brought one baby and the three elder children out to the car.

The father then balanced two to go cups of hot coffee on one hand over his infant in a car seat, which was in the same hand.

Putting the baby on the floor in the walkway to the hostess station he began to add cream and sugar, and haggle with the bill while the infant began to cry.

Two elderly women took pity on the baby and began cooing and burbling to her while the father fixed his coffee.

He then picked up his baby and began to walk out the door.

When one of the older women saw him balancing the hot coffee over the baby she nudged her husband who walked up to him and said "Son I am going to carry that coffee or that baby, and I am not taking no for an answer."

The man started to argue and one look from the sextegenarian quelled any argument.

I guess in a land where Miss Manners no longer exists, its up to us to enforce those rules we remember, those of us who still remember them.